In a continuing effort to improve the quality of shipping fruits, I, the inventor, typically hybridize a large number of peach, nectarine, plum, apricot, and cherry seedlings each year. I also grow a lesser number of open pollinated seedlings each year of these fruits, usually to reveal recessive characteristics. The present invention relates to a new and distinct variety of peach tree, which has been demonstrated varietally as ‘Spring Princess’.
During the spring of 1998 I gathered open pollinated seeds from several unnamed peaches (unpatented) located in my experimental orchard at Bradford Farms near Le Grand, Calif. in Merced County (San Joaquin Valley). Using embryoculture techniques I germinated the seeds, grew them as seedlings on their own root in my greenhouse, and transplanted them the following winter into a cultivated area of the experimental orchard described above as a group labeled “Early Peach (OP)”. During the spring of 2002 I selected the present variety as a single seedling from this “Early Peach (OP)” group. Subsequent to origination of the present variety of peach tree, I asexually reproduced it by budding and grafting in the experimental orchard described above, and such reproduction of plant and fruit characteristics were true to the original plant in all respects. The reproduction of the variety included the use of ‘Nemaguard’ (unpatented) rootstock upon which the present variety was compatible and true to type.
The present variety is most similar to ‘Crimson Lady’ (U.S. Plant Pat. No. 7,953) peach by producing good tasting fruit that is clingstone in type, mostly red skin color, and yellow in flesh color, but is distinguished therefrom by requiring considerably less chilling hours and by producing fruit that is larger in size, flatter in shape, melting instead of in non-melting in texture, and that matures about eight days earlier.